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Hubble’s importance

Hubble has also provided scientists with views deep into the universe. With the help of Hubble, scientists are able to see galaxies, supernovas, and other phenomena billions of light years away. That’s not important just for the cool pictures. It gives astronomers deeper insight into how galaxies and the universe were formed. And it helps us understand how our own galaxy could act in the future.

A planetary nebula captured with Hubble.

But it’s not without its critics. With each new service mission (including the latest), critics have contended that Hubble simply costs too much for what we’re getting. And according to one U.S. legislator, it’s to the detriment of other programs.

But for all its faults and costs, they pale in comparison to all of the knowledge Hubble has given us. Simply put, the Hubble Space Telescope has proven its worth. And I don’t believe there’s any debating that argument.

Yes, they are.

Nebulae, which are basically flattened disks of gas and dust, were thought to be the birthplace of planetary systems. Thanks to Hubble, that hypothesis was confirmed when it captured those disks around young stars. It gives us significant insight into the formation of our own planetary system.

Hubble’s cost is certainly high. According to NASA, the telescope has cost the United States $9.6 billion since its launch in 1990. In that time, critics remind us that scientists still haven’t determined the real age of the universe; they still don’t know, for sure, how the galaxy was formed, and they wonder if all those pictures Hubble sends back are really all that important.

In 1994, Hubble helped scientists determine that black holes exist at the heart of every active galaxy. Prior to that discovery, scientists believed that black holes were found only in certain areas or in the middle of a select number of galaxies.

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(Credit:
NASA)

“We have to make hard choices about whether a Hubble mission is worth it now, when moving ahead is likely to have an adverse impact on other programs, including quite possibly other programs in astronomy,” Sherwood Boehlert, a former Republican congressman from New York, said in 2005.

Space is an interesting subject. It arguably matters most to our knowledge of life. Understanding issues affecting the universe today will help us recognize them as they impact our lives going forward. And since we simply don’t have the ability to explore space the way it would be required to fully understand our history, it’s the Hubble Space Telescope that we must rely on to provide that for us.

I won’t go into the history of Hubble (after all, you can find that anywhere), but I think it’s important, especially as astronauts come back to Earth after improving it, that we consider some of the advancements Hubble has provided.

One of the main goals of Hubble, when it was first launched in 1990, was to measure the rate at which the universe is expanding in an effort to determine its exact age. According to NASA, that rate had errors of up to 50 percent before Hubble launched. Today, the rate of errors is just 10 percent, thanks to Hubble.

I could go on, but the laundry list of advancements Hubble has provided us with is far too long to be documented here. Is it costly? Sure. Could it have been built better to weather space conditions more effectively? Of course.

Amen. But what does this mean? Four principal things:

Customers need all their vendors, including and especially Microsoft, to deliver software and services that are flexible enough such that any developer can use their open interfaces and data to effectively integrate applications or to compose entirely new solutions. By increasing the openness of our products, we will provide developers additional opportunity to innovate and deliver value for customers.

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As a Microsoft admirer, critic, and competitor, I can’t help but applaud the depth and breadth of this move (though not everyone thinks there’s much to celebrate here). It is a banner day in the software industry (and proof that back-room bargains are the wrong way to achieve interoperability).

Ray Ozzie declared:

Open Connections. Microsoft is agreeing to make available all the APIs and protocols that any other Microsoft product requires to call another of Microsoft’s high-volume products (Windows Vista, Office 2007, SQL 2008, Sharepoint, etc.) will be available for free, without access restrictions (to competitors, partners, etc.).

The first step in this pillar is for Microsoft to make available its Microsoft Communication Protocol Program (MCPP) and its WSPP server to server protocols, covering Workgroup Server. This will include all of the information that Samba got plus client/server and more.

Microsoft is making this first set of documentation available immediately (though it will take a week or more for the search engines to crawl the 30,000+ pages) and the next set of documents available in April. This will allow companies, including competitors, to interoperate with Microsoft products on an equal (or close-to-equal, as being the source of the code always matters) basis.

Also of keen interest, “Microsoft is providing a covenant not to sue open source developers for development or non-commercial distribution of implementations of these protocols. These developers will be able to use the documentation for free to develop products. Companies that engage in commercial distribution of these protocol implementations will be able to obtain a patent license from Microsoft, as will enterprises that obtain these implementations from a distributor that does not have such a patent license.”

While this may sound like “same ol’ same ol’,” I talked with Microsoft about this and was told that such patent fees will be significantly lower than required by the EU most recently, for example. It would appear that Microsoft is prepared to lower the volume on its efforts to extract money directly from its patent portfolio. If true, this is welcome news.
Data Portability. Microsoft is developing a new set of APIs for the next revision of Office to facilitate interoperability. The company is also pledging to make it easy for customers (and competitors) to move data/content out of Sharepoint through open standards and open APIs.
Standards Transparency. “…When Microsoft supports a standard in a high-volume product, it will work with other major implementers of the standard toward achieving robust, consistent and interoperable implementations across a broad range of widely deployed products.” Microsoft is also agreeing to engage openly with developers on the web and elsewhere to expose how it supports standards, including extensions it makes.
Community. “An ongoing dialogue with customers, developers and open source communities will be created through an online Interoperability Forum. In addition, a Document Interoperability Initiative will be launched to address data exchange between widely deployed formats.” [Disclosure: I have been asked to serve as an advisor to Microsoft in these efforts.]

Welcome to the free world, Microsoft. Today Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, announced that Microsoft is making several bold strides to make its software and its company more open, transparent, and community-oriented.

Microsoft has listened. The real question now is how the open-source community will react. Is Microsoft too convenient a nemesis to abandon cheaply?

All in all, a huge day for Microsoft. Will there be gaps in Microsoft’s efforts? Undoubtedly. For one thing, it hasn’t really made much progress on its covenant not to sue commercial open-source providers, despite what Ina writes. But I’m impressed that it’s even bothering to try. This is a testament to the power of standing firm and raising the hue and cry against proprietary lock-in.

(Credit:
Denon)

The Denon AH-NC732 noise-canceling headphones, with accessories

Denon entered the headphone game just last year, but for a freshman competitor, the company had a lot to offer. Most of the models we auditioned–both full-size home headphones and travel-friendly in-ear models–ranged from good to excellent. Now the company is expanding its offerings with a noise-canceling model. The AH-NC732 On-Ear Noise Cancelling Headphones offer a lightweight (160 grams), acoustic optimizer (said to offer deep bass), and compact hard case. A single AAA battery is needed for the active noise cancellation, which counteracts ambient noise with an inverse soundwave. In other words, the new Denons look to be targeted directly at the similarly styled–and very popular–Bose QuietComfort 3s. Look for the Denon AH-NC732 On-Ear Noise Cancelling Headphones to hit in August for $300–a cool $50 less than the Bose.

But what’s more important than the financial crisis at the company is its inability to compete on too many levels with Wal-Mart and Best Buy. Most notably, Circuit City is simply unable to compete at the executive level.

In case you haven’t been following the Circuit City saga, the company’s stock price has lost nearly 75 percent of its value in the past 12 months and although it was hovering at around $19 per share a year ago, it’s now languishing at about $4.50 per share.

And now, in the face of shareholder resentment and at wit’s end, Schoonover and the rest of his buddies at Circuit City have found it necessary to hire Goldman Sachs to get out as soon as possible and leave the sinking ship in someone else’s hands. And while that may work for them, the real question is who wants this dog?

Nice one, Phil.

Let’s be honest — any company that has lost 75 percent of its stock value, has attempted a resurgence plan that failed miserably and is being pressured by major shareholders to oust its executives is nothing more than a poorly run enterprise. And as any shareholder of the company knows, the best way to solve that problem is to get rid of the anchors and find some new management that may actually know how to run a company.

Of course, I’m not the only one who believes Schoonover can’t lead Circuit City. Wattles Capital Management, a firm that currently owns about 6.5 percent of the company said Schoonover and the rest of his cronies should be removed from office as soon as possible and replaced with people who know what they’re doing.

Circuit City is a sinking ship. And although some say its size alone will help it stay afloat, I think that’s wishful thinking. With a floundering stock price, losses that keep getting worse and extremely poor management, there’s not much more for this company to do other than find someone who’s willing to take it off the shareholders’ hands.

If I had to guess, Circuity City will probably be acquired within the next three months. During that time, the executives will be nothing more than lame ducks just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Meanwhile, Circuit City will be forced to endure even greater losses on some of its 677 stores and try to figure out a way to stay afloat in an environment that has become hostile from all sides.

But it’s for that reason that Circuit City must be sold now. The management (for once) is making the right decision in hiring Goldman Sachs and allowing someone with some actual foresight to run the company and figure out what’s best for all parties involved. Of course, the results may hurt Schoonover’s feelings.

Philip Schoonover, Circuit City’s CEO, is probably one of the worst executives in the retail industry. Presiding over corporate degradation and a financial crisis of epic proportions, Schoonover fired 3,400 of the company’s most experienced employees, has spoken about increasing customer satisfaction and relocating underperforming stores, but has yet to produce any real benefits, and managed only a meek response to shareholders in December when he was forced to tell them how poorly he has done: “Our current focus is to rebuild our selling culture.”

With a pathetic showing each quarter and no real initiatives to turn the tide, it wouldn’t surprise me if the incoming firm guts the company entirely. In fact, those 677 stores may drop significantly and the new management will finlly do something to turn the company around. And if they were smart, they would downsize a bit, reduce expenditures as quickly and efficiently as possible and put the company back in black. From there, it can worry about its stock price and go about changing the the way it does business.

Until then, let’s watch as the executives and the board run this company into the ground.

Last week I wrote that Circuit City is in deep trouble and today, BusinessWeek wrote up a news story claiming the retailer may have hired Goldman Sachs to help it find a company that’s willing to take this dog and turn it around. And while I’m not sure it will have such good luck doing it, it’s about time Circuit City executives wake up and realize that something needs to be done.

But for the preservation of the company, I agree with Wattles and the other shareholders that see Circuit City for what it really is — a barely relevant electronics retailer that has yet to understand that its time is up.

“Phil’s actions in the past year show that he doesn’t understand retail; he’s completely mismanaged the company, and it’s time for him to go,” said Mark Wattles, principal of the investment firm, in an interview with BusinessWeek.

The unit will work on delivering consumer Web services on mobile devices and driving new revenue for the British carrier. Knook, a 17-year Microsoft veteran, will start on March 10.

Microsoft recently announced a significant boost to its mobile effort, with plans to buy T-Mobile Sidekick maker Danger for a reported $500 million.

Server and Tools executive Andy Lees is being tapped to run Microsoft’s mobile unit, according to sources. Microsoft also recently hired Staples executive Todd Peters to head Windows Mobile marketing.

Well, we now know what other interests Pieter Knook will be pursuing. Knook, whose departure was expected to be announced this afternoon as part of a broader executive shuffle, is joining Vodafone to head up a new Internet services unit.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

What might be its killer feature, however, is that it gives you a detailed listing of when and where your photos have been viewed. It’s something you find on YouTube and Viddler for videos, which can make tracking the buzz of a certain shot more fun for the creator. Many photo services simply give you a view count, which isn’t nearly as useful.

I’m always on the lookout for new ways to host images for quick and dirty sharing. Worth checking out is Photie, which is an incredibly simple photo host. It’s light on features, but offers unlimited storage and file sizes (great for people with 14 megapixel SLRs), along with generous sharing options both for downloading shots and hosting on external sites and social networks.

While the tracking is great, the service is not without its small annoyances. Thumbnail previews are slow to load, and tags can only be added to shots one at a time. Users of Flickr will yearn for more.

Photie isn't all that different from other photo hosts, but the layout is clean and free of ads, and there are simple ways to share your shots in all manner of sizes. (click to enlarge)

The release comes as Mozilla prepares to release the fourth beta test of Firefox 3.5–the next version of the open-source browser. Mozilla had originally planned to release its new “Shiretoko” version of Firefox in early 2009. But after releasing Firefox 3.1 beta 3 last month, the organization behind the browser said a fourth beta is planned–and with the new version number, 3.5.

Mozilla developers identified and fixed several stability bugs in the browser engine used in Firefox and other Mozilla-based products. Some of these crashes showed evidence of memory corruption under certain circumstances, and we presume that with enough effort, at least some of these could be exploited to run arbitrary code.

Updates for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux are available at the Mozilla site. (Downloads in all languages are available here.) Firefox 3 users will receive an update notification within 48 hours, or they can download the update manually by selecting “Check for Updates” from the Help menu.

CNET’s Seth Rosenblatt contributed to this report.

Meanwhile, Firefox continues to chip away at Internet Explorer’s market dominance. Mozilla now has 22.05 percent of the global browser market share, compared with IE’s 66.82 percent, a drop of more than seven percentage points in a year, according to figures from Web metrics company Net Applications.

Updated at 11:32 a.m. PST with a summary of the bug fixes.

In March, security-testing company Secunia reported that Mozilla had more vulnerabilities in its Web browser last year than Internet Explorer,
Safari, and Opera combined, but that Mozilla dealt with those flaws more quickly than Microsoft did.

One critical security bug fixed crashes caused by memory corruption, which the developers felt could have been used at some point to run arbitrary code.

Expected changes in Firefox 3.5 include faster execution of Web-based JavaScript programs, a private-browsing mode, native support for the JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) technology for exchanging data between servers and browsers, and built-in audio and video abilities for bypassing Flash or other multimedia technologies.

Two other high-profile bugs involved a misinterpretation of a particular Adobe Flash code that could have been exploited, and a URI mismatch that also could have led to arbitrary JavaScript executions. However, there’s no evidence in the bugs that these security holes had been exploited.

Mozilla released an update to
Firefox 3 on Tuesday that patches 12 security vulnerabilities, four of which it rated as critical.

AOL.com and AIM.com Web mail users should once again be able to view attached images inline and without hiccups. A bug created in Firefox 3.0.7 caused images to break where they had loaded properly in Firefox 3.0.6. Also, users who noticed previously stored cookies mysteriously disappearing should find that bug repaired.

Firefox 3.0.9, the Web browser’s third update this year, fixes two critical vulnerabilities in the Firefox browser engine and two in its JavaScript engine, according to a security advisory posted Tuesday:

In its initial VisualRank efforts, Google’s research focused on product queries. That’s in part because product queries correspond well to the type of “image features” that were central to the study. In addition, the company said, those types of queries are “popular in actual usage” and users have strong expectations about the results they expect, which gave the researchers key examples to address.

Hewlett-Packard, meanwhile, has opened a lab at Tsinghua University in Beijing to delve into a wide range of media search types, including still images, video, and music.

Google is starting to provide a fuller picture of the work it’s undertaking to create a practical tool for image searches.

On its Google Research blog Thursday, the company offered a brief introduction to VisualRank, a system that sorts out images by means of visual cues rather than by text associated with the images. The write-up is a distillation of a much longer paper (PDF), “PageRank for Product Image Search,” that two Google researchers presented last week at a conference in Beijing on Web technologies.

What happens when you don't have good image processing in your search engine? You get inconsistent results, as seen in this page returned for the query "McDonalds".

(Credit:
Google)

Google's VisualRank algorithm sorts images by how similar they appear to an inferred original.

(Credit:
Google)

Over the years, image search has been a significant challenge for Google and others, like start-ups Polar Rose and Riya, with most of the progress being in a fairly limited set of facial recognition characteristics. Last year, for instance, the company said that its Google Image Search could tell the difference between a picture with a face in it and a picture that lacked a face, though it couldn’t distinguish between one face and another.

First, estimating similarity measures for all of the images on the Web is computationally expensive; approximations or alternative computations are needed. Second, we hope to evaluate our approach with respect to the large number of recently proposed alternative clustering methods. Third, many variations of PageRank can be used in quite interesting ways for image search. For example, we can use some of these previously published methods to reintroduce, in a meaningful manner, the textual information that the VisualRank algorithm removed.

The VisualRank system is not yet live, and Google intimated that the image search technology would not become more widely available anytime soon. It did say that “in the coming months” it would offer more details on an “approach that has an easy integration with both text and visual clues.”

Dust off your college calculus, because Google's image rank (IR) formula involves eigenvectors and iterative matrix multiplication.

But recognizing a face or other object is a different order of business from delivering meaningful search results based on facial features or on object type.

(Credit:
Google)

As it moves forward, the search giant says it’s exploring three main directions:

Google has also begun to broaden its initiative to take in other query types, including those related to travel.

That sort of feature is increasingly common in digital cameras, which in some cases even recognize when a person is smiling or not. Camera makers are also working toward technology that knows who you photographed.

“Apple never had any intention of making a CDMA” version of the iPhone, Seidenberg told the Journal. Seidenberg also said that “previous overtures by Apple prior to the launch of the original iPhone were meant to help Apple gain negotiating leverage over AT&T,” the Journal reported.

Even though Verizon says it will have 25 to 30 markets deployed next year, the initial chips on the market will only be used for laptops. Chips made for cell phones and other mobile devices will likely follow about a year later.

The fact is that Verizon’s executives have said they are willing to work with a variety of device makers. In fact, Verizon has developed a special Open Device Initiative to streamline the certification process to get new devices on its network more quickly. And Tony Lewis, head of the ODI division, confirmed recently that the company is talking to at least five Netbook makers. Perhaps, one of them is Apple.

In the past 36 hours, rumors have been flying around that Verizon Wireless is in talks with Apple, Microsoft, and a
Google Android phone maker. So who’s next?

As for the integrated 3G/4G chips that will be used in cell phones, Bhushan said those chips will be available for testing in the middle of 2010, which means commercial devices aren’t likely to hit the market until 2011 at the earliest.

“Microsoft’s strategy has not changed, it is and has always been to provide a software platform for the industry,” a company spokesman said. “We work closely with many mobile operators and device makers around the world because customers want different experiences on a variety phones.”

But I think that if Verizon is really having serious talks with Apple, in particular, it is about getting the iPhone on its super speedy 4G wireless network that it will start building this year. Verizon has said it will have 25 to 30 markets up and running by the end of 2010.

“If Apple decided that they could sell more iPhones by developing a CDMA version and then they took advantage of the ODI process, they could get a CDMA iPhone certified on the network,” he said. “And maybe they would sell the unsubsidized phone in Apple stores, and you’d activate service with Verizon and pick a service plan. I suppose that’s one possible model under the ODI framework.”

“The biggest challenge for us is meeting the expectations of the carriers and manufacturers,” he said, “Everyone wants products earlier. But we have to build test devices. And it just takes time.”

Also, Venture Beat’s speculation that Verizon might be looking to offer an Android phone also seems plausible, given that the story cites a job description on Verizon’s Web site that seeks an “Android Devices Expert.” The article also points out that an unnamed CDMA carrier is getting code developed for a chip used in an Android CDMA device. This development could be for Sprint, which is a Google Open Handset Alliance member and also has a CDMA network. But who knows?

So what’s your prediction for the next Verizon rumor?

Just in case you are having trouble keeping up, here’s a summary to get you up to speed:

Mohit Bhushan, senior director of product management for Qualcomm, one of the chipmakers making integrated 3G/4G silicon, said at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February that his company is just starting to sample its 3G/4G chips this year for device manufacturers to test. Commercial products won’t likely hit the market using these chips until a year later, he said.

Late Sunday, USA Today reported that Verizon was planning to offer an iPhone on Verizon’s current CDMA-based wireless network. Business Week followed on Monday with its own story that Verizon is talking to Apple about a new “iPhone-lite” phone and a tablet-Netbook-type device. On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported Verizon is talking to Microsoft about a
Zune-like, music playing
iPhone killer. And then VentureBeat published a story saying that Verizon could also be talking to Android phone developers.

Rumor, rumors. Today's are about Verizon deals with smartphone makers.

Seriously though, I am not discounting any of these rumors. Where there is smoke there is usually fire. And believe me there are plumes of smoke surrounding the Apple rumors. And it wouldn’t surprise me one bit that Verizon is also talking to Microsoft. Of course, Microsoft is denying that it is developing its own mobile device hardware.

Verizon Wireless CTO Tony Melone also said in an interview at the CTIA tradeshow in Las Vegas that Apple could theoretically use the ODI process to get a CDMA version of the iPhone on Verizon’s network.

Verizon’s CEO Ivan Seidenberg even told the Journal that a 4G iPhone is more likely to come to Verizon’s network than a 3G version of the phone.

But consumers shouldn’t hold their breath. Devices for 4G networks are at least two years away.

Still, it’s only Tuesday, and at this rate, I’m wondering if tomorrow we’ll hear another rumor that Verizon is talking to Palm to get its hands on the new Palm Pre, which will debut on Sprint’s network this summer. Or maybe Verizon is in talks to buy Yahoo. (Just kidding, but it seems like everyone is rumored to be buying Yahoo these days, so I thought I’d throw that in there.)

Not surprisingly, Verizon’s spokesman Jeffrey Nelson declined to comment on any of these rumors.

Perhaps, Apple is at it again. The deal between Apple and AT&T is expected to expire next year, and AT&T has expressed interest in extending that exclusive deal. Maybe Apple is turning up the heat to get better terms in the next agreement.

General Setup menu
Power Saver: Off
Light Senor: Off

(Credit:
CNET)

Below you’ll find the settings we found best for viewing the Sony KDL-52XBR6 in a completely dark room via the HDMI input with a 1080p, film-based source. Your settings may vary depending on source, room conditions, and personal preference. Check out the Picture settings and calibration FAQ for more information.

Motion Enhancer: Off
CineMotion: Auto 1
Game Mode: Off
Video/Photo Optimizer: Video

Those picture quality issues swayed our decision making enough to keep the EC award in Samsung’s camp for this round, although both scored the same overall and the argument can definitely be made that the Sony has the better overall picture, price notwithstanding. If black levels are your bag and you don’t want a plasma, you can’t do better than the XBR6 without shelling out gobs more money for an LED model.

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In the contest for “best LCD,” the main combatants for the last couple of years have been Sony and Samsung. We reviewed Samsung’s LN52A650 earlier this year and liked what we saw enough to award it our Editors’ Choice. Sony’s latest contender for that award is the subject of our latest HDTV review, the KDL-52XBR6.

White Balance menu:
R-Gain: -3
G-Gain: -4
B-Gain: -1
R-Bias: -2
G-Bias: 0
B-Bias: 0

First things first: this Sony ain’t cheap. But its ability to produce a deep shade of black is unmatched in our experience by any non-LED-based LCD or non-Kuro plasma, and many other aspects of its performance, especially its video processing, were definitely impressive. On the other hand, for that much cash we expected better color accuracy and screen uniformity.

In addition to producing deep black levels, Sony's KDL-52XBR6 lets you exchange the silver speaker grille for another color.

Read the full review of the Sony Bravia KDL-52XBR6.

Picture menu:
Picture Mode: Cinema
Backlight: 2
Picture: 90
Brightness: 51
Color: 54
Hue: 0
Color Temperature: Warm2
Sharpness: 5
Noise Reduction: Off
MPEG Noise Reduction: Off

Advanced Settings menu:
Black Corrector: Off
Advanced C.E.: Off
Gamma: Low
Clear White: Off
Color Space: Standard
Live Color: Off (grayed out)