Smoking could be hazardous to your Apple Warranty

This is great! Or so I believe.

The following link tells of denied warranty claims due to second hand smoke and nicotine damage.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/11/smoking-could-be-hazardous-to-your-apple-warranty.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

For those that don't want to follow the link:

Google Wave

So many people interested in Wave!

Just checked in on the Twitter world, many of you are asking about Google Wave. What is it? How can I get an invite? Can I sell you my last invite? and so on...

I will not go into too much detail, but what you should know is that Wave is a powerful collaboration tool.

Finland, Spain Bringing 1Mbps Broadband To Everyone

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Finland, Spain Bringing 1Mbps Broadband To Everyone:

While the US talks, other countries are acting. Both Finland and Spain have now decided to add 'broadband' to their universal service requirements. By 2011, any Finn or Spaniard, no matter where they live, should be able to get a reliable 1Mbps connection at a reasonable price.
'Universal service': it's a common concept in developed countries, and it provides money to telephone operators and other utilities to ensure that service is extended even to places where it would not otherwise be profitable, and that prices remain reasonable. As broadband increasingly becomes an essential utility, members of Congress and US regulators at the FCC have pondered how some form of basic connectivity might be extended to every American address through the Universal Service Fund.



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I Wish I could get internet! Notice I didn't say broadband? I just want proper access to the internet from my own home.

Seriously, we run windows and antivirus updates and are pretty much out of our allowed limit for the month.

Maybe my approach is backward, why should I update antivirus when I don't have enough bandwidth to get a virus?!?

Nothing against Finland or Spain, they are good countries, but why don't the "super" countries have internet for their people? So much for being world leaders.

Here's hoping that the rest of the world follows the lead of Finland and Spain. Thank you, you crazy countries that I may never visit. You are my heroes.

Google Chrome OS

I have just finished reading an article about the new Chrome OS  --here--


More important than the article are the posted comments. Reading comments like these are how I keep in touch with what the general population thinks about a topic. That said, I really hope that the Google Chrome OS is as innovative and game changing as some speculate.

Music

I was asked recently to explain a little bit about music files, specifically MP3 files, in regards to quality.

The general idea was that the original files in the WAV format were over 100 MB in size, but after converting to MP3, the file size was reduced to only roughly 3% the original size. How can MP3 possibly be of any useful quality if it is so small?

As I know the inquisitive nature of the requester, I began by explaining some of the basics of the MP3 digital music file as we use them today: